Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, has said that it may be necessary to establish whether the BBC's governance provides sufficient protection against any single news organisation having too powerful a hold over the British public.

Giving an interview to MediaGuardian's Media Talk podcast, Hunt said that it was necessary to take into account the fact that the BBC "has different governance structures" and the "question you need to ask is do those different governance structures … provide the protection the public needs against one media organisation becoming too dominant".

Research conducted by Ofcom as part of News Corporation's bid for BSkyB concluded that the combined company would have had too large a share of news provision, prompting the regulator to recommend that Sky News be spun off from the rest of News Corp and its Times and Sun newspapers.

However, an enlarged News Corp would still have been smaller than the BBC – with News Corp's 22% "share of reference" for news consumption across newspapers and television, compared with the BBC's 37%. BBC News output was consumed by 81% of Britons each week, whereas 51% would have consumed news from either News Corp or Sky each week if the companies had merged fully.

The minister also chose his words carefully when asked if he would approve a News Corp/Sky merger in the light of the phone-hacking disclosures. He said it was "not really something I can give a quick answer to", adding that he would need to consider any phone-hacking disclosures should News Corp try to bid for Sky again.

Hunt said: "The reason that in the end I asked for Ofcom's advice about whether it was advisable to accept the undertakings [spinning off Sky News] was because the phone hacking issues became so large that I thought there was a legitimate question to ask about whether there issues in the corporate governance of News Corp."

He pointed out that he never reached a decision on the subject because the News Corp bid for Sky was dropped in July in the wake of an all-party political revolt prompted by new phone-hacking revelations, but said he would be obliged to consider the subject again. "Obviously, I would need to be satisfied on all those areas were there to be any future bid on the table," Hunt added.

Media Talk at the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention will be available online from Friday lunchtime, via MediaGuardian and iTunes.

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